My New Zealand Grandmother always said that: “someone was either a Cook, or a Baker”.

She meant that when you turned your hand to creating wonderful food in your kitchen, you either excelled naturally at making things like great roast dinners and beautiful stir fries or you were a wonder at making huge, light, airy cakes that would be the envy of many.

I think she was right, she was 1000% a Baker, and living during a time when few women worked and a “bought” lunch was unheard of, she would pack my Grandad an amazing lunch every working day.

She baked three to four times a week, more if guests were expected or there were family Birthdays, Easter, Christmas and any other special occasion. There were always a minimum of four or five different cakes, slices (bars) or biscuits (cookies) in her baking tins, more on the aforementioned special occasions.

Scones were not even counted as “baking” they were almost standard in the house, like bread. There were metal tins in her kitchen cupboards of various sizes.

Long before the days of plastic containers, these metal tins with their tight fitting lids kept everything fresh and crisp. Very large ones were for cake, the medium sized ones were for slices and the smaller ones were for biscuits. There were even large tins that had recessed lids, similar to the sort found on paint tins today and my sister and I would squabble about who got to open these with the end of a spoon and discover first what was inside.

None of the tins were see-through of course so every opening was a surprise but as kids we all had our favourite biscuits so it was extra special if we discovered that one of our favourites was on offer.

My favourite was Grans Shortbread, and since sadly her cookbook went “missing” after her funeral I never got her amazing recipe.

Choosing one thing from the tins was allowed, you only ever got two biscuits if you were especially good but I discovered that if you were alone with Grandma in the kitchen, helped getting out the cups and saucers for tea, and dried up and put away any dishes that she had washed, then she would take a quick look around to make sure my mother wasn’t close by and then slip me a third as a special treat.

Often she would pass me a piece of shortbread that had broken in half saying with a smile: “Oh dear, a broken bit, quick, finish it up”. Sometimes there were no broken pieces of shortbread so she would break one in half and then do the “broken bit” joke and it was a little secret that we kept to ourselves.

At least as a kid I always thought that, but looking back she may have done did that with all the grandchildren.

If we were staying over and baking biscuits together then she would let me ice (glaze) them and I loved poking around making that I imagined to be intricate patterns in my decorations, but in reality they were probably a lot of messy squiggles.

Sometimes my own children have the “baking” urge but don’t really want to go to the effort of actually making something, they just want to decorate.

Actually the bit they really don’t want to do is the cleaning up afterwards, so I just take some plain shop bought biscuits and then mix up a small batch of icing so that they can decorate the tops.

The ingredients are: Icing (powder) sugar, melted butter if I’m feeling decedent, water if I’m not, and whatever colour food colouring the kids desire as their first choice.

Invariably they ask for five colours each, to these requests the answer is always “No”. Four or five colours for our Christmas Gingerbreads is the most I will ever do these days.

Life is too short to be giving in to the extraneous whims of children when I am the one doing all of the work making the icing and cleaning up. For biscuits they get one colour each with the advice that should they want more they are more than welcome, but they have to make it themselves.

To date they have never taken me up on this. I used to use plastic sandwich lunch bags as icing bags but they are too thin and the bags often split if squeezed too hard or if the icing mix is too warm. Cleaning up after split bags is way too much extra work (can you sense a theme of laziness here?) so I quickly found that commercial icing bags are worth the expense.

One thing is difficult though, the icing cools quickly and gets more and more solid as it does, so if piping with a very small hole then the hole can get stopped up after a short time. Since opening the bag and messing with the contents is again more work I started to look for quick and easy ways to fix these annoying little clumps of hardened powdered sugar.

If you have a daughter who has long hair then you will always have hair-ties on hand somewhere. I keep a stash of unused ones at home for the inevitable “Mama, I’ve run out of hair bands and I’m going out / doing sport/ the bus is coming for school in two minutes !”.

These are always dramatic howls and I have to have the “right” ones on hand. Just the right circumference and thickness, not just any old hair band will do. Needless to say I also therefor have a stash of “ew no, not those!” hair ties and now I also have an excellent use for them: Tying up icing bags.

There are hair bands that a joined with a small metal connecter, I can’t use those, but if you hunt around then you will also find some without the metal piece.

These are perfect. When your icing is getting too clogged up, a simple remedy of ten seconds in the microwave usually does the trick. Ergo the need for ties that have no metal connectors.

Rubber bands would also work of course but we use these so rarely that they get brittle and break as soon as you try and stretch them. Hair ties don’t break like this and being smaller they are easier to tie around the bags. It’s an easy solution for an irritating problem.

Decorating biscuits with icing always brings back fond memories of my Grandma, and the conversations that are special between kids and their grandparents. I hope that the times spent decorating biscuits with me will also one day be special memories for my children too.

Rien working on his art work. He considered his paintings his “children” and the idea that he would have sell, and part with them pained him.

He discovered that he could publish images of his paintings and drawings in book form, and therefore the originals would remain in his possession.”

It seems to me that choosing the vocation of “artist” must be rather awkward if you didn’t really like parting with the works you produced, but needed the income from selling them to live on.

Fortunately in Riens case, his cheeky and quirky gnome books became popular fashion items in the 1990’s Netherlands, so he was lucky to have discovered the book option at a very opportune moment.

Going onwards I find an indoor restaurant area called de Boot, it was still early and they were busy getting ready to open.

A friendly staff member told me they were preparing for a children’s birthday party booking, but welcomes any photos, so I just took few quick photographs of the decor before continuing onwards past several booths full of merchandise.

I know from previous years, some of the biggest sand sculptures are waiting for me outside…

I found the next section of the Sand Sculpture exhibition in Garderen a little creepy at first.

I realise that depicting people singing is difficult: statues with open mouths look extremely awkward in the absence of sound.

It was not so long ago that the vast majority of the things we take for granted as modern entertainment didn’t exist. Instead, there was the radio, gramophone, piano, and people sang in family groups or with friends. Hymns were important, almost everything commercial stopped on Sundays, church attendance was a social must.

The Netherlands has it’s own Bible Belt where even today women are expected to dress conservatory every day, they wear hats, and attending church several times per week as well as twice on Sundays is far from unusual.

In these areas the idea that the Sabbath is a day of rest of strictly adhered to. This is why these sand sculptures show people gathering in their parlor to sing.

Children had very simple toys and made do with their imaginations and each other. There were no cupboard full of games, toys, electronics. Sports were limited but outside play encouraged, except on Sundays.

Household chores in the past were also very different than to today. We think nothing of popping a load of laundry into the machine whenever it suits us.

Laundry in the past was an entire day of hard graft for the women of the household. Everything was washed by hand, water heated on a stove, a wringer was used to try and get as much water out after washing as possible and once the clothes were dry they were ironed with heavy cast iron irons that were heated on a stove.

The stove had to be kept stoked with firewood to keep the temperature up, so doing laundry was an extremely labour intensive job.

Most people were not wealthy and usually had only two full sets of clothes: one for the week and the other for Sunday best. The last photographs in this post show sand sculptures of a father and son, shivering in their underwear whilst their washed clothes slowly dried.Sometimes people wish that the pace of modern life was slower, calmer, less rushed, less busy and more like “olden times”. It’s easy to forget that some aspects of modern life are beyond better… none one us would like to endure even one day of waiting in our underclothes for our clothes to dry like this. We like the idea of the “olden days”, but I notice that we are very selective about “just the positive aspects” of these days we pick.

April 30, 2017

Arriving at the Garderen Sand Sculpture festival last year, I make my way inside the gate to find first, a large display of concrete garden sculptures.

If you wanted dogs, cats, birds, bird baths, trucks, baskets, horses with carriages or almost anything else, to classical maidens, the list was almost endless.

In fact that was not available was almost the point here as the statues were lined up on long rows both side of the paths.

I photographed but a few, and a few other pieces were dotted around in between the concrete pieces: a bicycle with a basket filled with flowers, on the ground below that a mass of vintage soda syphon.

A few of the concrete pieces had been painted (mostly animals) the rest gleamed white in the summer sun.

I wonder who on earth would come here especially to buy these but remember that there is probably also something here to suit every taste, from sophisticated to kitsch. The outside statue area is differently arranged this year, mostly due to the revised Entrance point, but every year I come I think that they have managed to squeeze in even more items. I’m not the only curious customer, for very visitor heading directly to the sand sculpture section, there are more taking a quiet look around. I might be moving slowly but at least I am also heading in the right direction.

The exhibits continue one after another at Fort Kijkduin. I am taking up the rear of our group, enjoying it all at a leisurely pace. (“Fast” is a setting I no longer have after my accident anyway). There is however something very very different just around the corner… Looks like I am in for an unexpcted surprise…

April 16, 2017

One of the things that I see in the Fort Kijkduin exhibitions is how buttons are made from bone. I had a rough idea before but have never seen any actual illustrations of it until now. It’s obviously a more percision task than I ever imagined… Cool!

April 15, 2017

The museum and exhibits at Fort Kijkduin near Den Helder show us many of the aspects that the fort has to offer.

One information board about World War II told us:

“When the general mobilisation was announced in 1939, the fortifications here in Den Helder were reinforced up to war (strength) standards.

Extra soldiers were housed in Fort Kijkduin. However, after the surrender of May 1940 the Germans took control.

The German navy used the fort for artillery training also because they wanted to used the fort as a bomb shelter. T

he topside of the reduit (Kiwi’s Note: FR for a fortified structure) was given a thick capping of reinforced concrete of about 60 cm thick.

Under this cap was an additional meter thick layer of sand.

The Germans used the fire control post as lookout post.” It’s natural that one army (or navy) or another has used this fortification to their advantage over the past centuries. It’s easier however to think of these places being places of the “distant past” rather than of the “recent past”. One can only hope that it is never ever needed again in warfare. The exhibits continue: this is an amazing place, so much to see and thought provoking too.

Fort Kuijkduin has seen many changes since it’s formative days as a single story series of complex tunnels and bunkers.

Over time more layers were added, the fortifications increased and the size of the site changed as war, and the defences needed against enemies changed.

The complex tunnel system (or at least some of them) are open to the public, but accessible only by staircases, so out of reach for me and any other less able-bodied visitors.

Although I missed this section of the complex there is still plenty more to enjoy on the upper levels and if you really wanted to stop and look at everything in absolute detail, then one visit here would not be enough.

Models, diagrams, historical artifacts and more abound.

In the first hall that I enter, a mannequin figure in one of the alcove cells immediately gives me the impression of a famous painting by Goya and indeed I find out that this is no coincidence. I studied this painting in my Art History days of youth.

With my study notes long gone I found this excellent background:

“In 1807 Napoleon offered an alliance with Charles IV of Spain in order to conquor Portugal. Napoleon’s troops poured into Spain, supposedly just passing through. However the alliance was a trick: The French were taking over and Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, was now the new King of Spain.

On May 02 1808 hundreds of Spaniards rebelled. Unsuccessful, these freedom fighters were rounded up and massacred by the French. Their blood literally ran through the streets of Madrid. Goya, although having French sympathies in the past, was appalled by these events and commemorated the uprising in two paintings, the most famous of which being “Third of May 1808”.
To discover why this exhibit is here I read from an information board:

“On 02 May 1808 the Spanish people stood up against the French but their attempt was unsuccessful. The painter Francisco de Goya made a moving painting about the mass execution that followed.

Many (Spaniards) were made prisoner of war and were forced to work on all sorts of large projects throughout the French empire. One of the persons depicted being executed in this painting is a symbol for all of the prisoners of war who were transported here and forced to dig out Fort Kijkduin.” I had no clue that this connection existed. It’s a sobering thought, not just for the Spanish who lost their lives but also for those and all the other prisoners who were forced into hard labour both at home and abroad.

Arriving in the entrance hall of Fort Kijkduin, located close to Den Helder in the Netherlands, visitor attention is immediately caught by a large exhibit.

It depicts the landing battle between the English and (Napoleon’s)French on the beaches here. An information board translates as:

“The early morning landing from 27 August 1799.

The English ships produce such heavy fire that the Bataafse army could not prevent the enemy from coming ashore.

Even worse, both of the rifle battalions (green uniforms) had to retreat to the hamlet of Groote Keeten.

Additionally, the second Battalion of the 5th Half Brigade (Blue and white uniforms) was forced to retreat to the Koegras.

The losses from the Bataafse side: approximately 1400 men. The losses from the English side:approximately 500 men.

As a result of this landing Napoleon ordered the buildings of fortifications in Den Helder, including this fort.”

The little model figures and boats depict the battle, but are safely under a protective cover, away from inquisitive little fingers.This is how, as soon as we get in the door, we find the reason that this fort was built… and since starting at the beginning is very good idea, so in we go!